The legend of Dracula is the stuff of which adult Halloweens are made.

With appetites whetted by E. Elias Merhige's gripping recent film "Shadow of the Vampire," readers will be ready for this new overview by Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller, who travels often to Transylvania but winters in the Tampa Bay area.

Part scholarly, part pop, sumptuously illustrated throughout, Miller's book reconstructs the age-old legend of the vampire, tracing its most infamous articulation in the historical, fictional and artistic portrayals of Count Dracula of Transylvania.

In the first of four sections, Miller introduces the historical figure often identified with Dracula or (mistakenly) acknowledged as his source: Vlad Dracula, was a 15-century voivode (ruling chief) of Wallachia, part of present-day Romania. This mythic figure is also known as "Vlad the Impaler" because of his preferred form of executing enemies and opponents. His tyrannical rule gave rise to legends of a kind of heroic nationalism in a stubbornly feudal age, but also fueled rumors of his unbridled sadism in dealing with enemies at home and abroad.

Section two addresses the origin and development of vampire legends in central Europe, through reported sightings in the 1700's, into the 19^th century, when poetic creations--like satanic aristocratic lords and femme fatales--lent an erotic sensuality to earlier stories of simple horror.

Later chapters describe the culmination of the vampire image, the one contemporary readers know best, in Bram Stoker's turn-of-the-century standard elements we associate with vampires had already been well-established--sharp fangs that leave two bite marks, seductive powers, shape-shifting potential, aristocratic lineage and unusual strength, including the paradoxical power to attract and repulse, a power as effective on the reader as on the victim.

Most intriguing is Miller's inclusion of historical and ongoing interpretations of the novel. She notes, for example, that the novel is "the product of [a Victorian] society...culture that was marked by a variety of fears and anxieties"--sexual repression, fear of the rising tide of the "modern" emancipated woman and the haunting sense that neither Darwin's views nor exciting new technologies could prevent our regression into a more primitive world. And virtually every page includes fascinating information about the truth of the novel and the literary, cinematic and tourist industries it has spawned. As Miller herself muses: "It appears that the Count will never die."

A comprehensive survey of publications and films about Dracula, notes and a bibliography support the scholarly integrity of this book. But readers would be mistaken to think it's a dry read. Miller's fascination with her subject (Why are we so captivated by this one particular villain?) is a stand-in for our own. And the 134 illustrations, most in full color, viscerally reintroduce both Dracula and his impaling forebears.

Even the publisher's typographical errors and unorthodox choices (like the tongue-in-cheek blood-red accents on each page) pale beside these chilling images linking blood, sex and death in a way first spawned by Stoker's novel.